Posts Tagged ‘citizenship’

So states Linus’s Law. Coined by Eric Raymond in his book “The Cathedral and the Bazaar:” Given a large enough beta-tester and co-developer base, almost every problem will be characterized quickly and the fix obvious to someone. Or, less formally, “Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.” I dub this: “Linus’s Law”. My original formulation […]

So says William Hague, England’s Foreign Secretary. “Only terrorists, criminals and spies should fear secret activities of the British and US intelligence agencies.” I appreciate the challenge of collecting accurate intelligence and connecting the dots. It’s the 21st century and the bad guys no longer hang out in shadowed doorways and use dumpsters as drop […]

Previously, I wrote how the government’s poor response to hurricane Sandy is a manifestation of decades worth of mission creep: Micromanagement of the citizenry, on the other hand, is something that should unequivocally be outside the control or influence of governments, if for no other reason than it detracts from the organization’s ability to successfully […]

There are many. The most valuable one for survivors and observers may be that governments, even when optimally structured and run, cannot mitigate the Big Acts of Nature. The optimal structure for a government would have its power and influence limited to addressing the big things that are a consequence of large numbers of people interacting […]

This ad from the Libertarian Party sums it up nicely. More government first and foremost brings with it ways to defend and protect more government, whether by corruption, cronyism, bureaucratic process, or military intervention. It’s the law of diminishing returns. Of course, it’s important to sprinkle a little help back to the masses, enough to […]

In The Logic of Failure, Dietrich Dörner makes the following observation: In our political environment, it would seem, we are surrounded on all sides with good intentions. But the nurturing of good intentions is an utterly undemanding mental exercise, while drafting plans to realize those worthy goals is another matter. Moreover, it is far from […]

…so far this year. Murdered. Oh my. Clearly, the US should get out of Chicago. Or Chicago needs a gun control law or something. Wait a minute…isn’t Chicago one of the cities with the strictest gun control laws? Makes me feel like taking the Springfield XD .45 ACP out to the range for a little […]

But you should have heard the crying and pleading from dedicated Madison folk about how important it was to keep open this wholly unregulated, health-code flouting shanty town, which, it was argued, was housing the homeless. How insidiously consistent that the Occupy With Self rabble would seek to turn their constitutionally protected, but shallow protest […]

This is an awful story: Last year after a full-body scan at a Seattle airport, Cissna was singled out for a pat-down, her second, she said, within three months. Cissna is a breast-cancer survivor who has had a mastectomy. She refused the pat-down – seeing it as invasive – and left the airport to return […]